Dry cleaner alterations near me

My Se-dom girlfriend complains that I plan things far too much and far too in the future, and thinks I could be a J rather than a P, but idk if this is just her Se talking or something else (I have diagnosed social anxiety but pretty sure I have general anxiety too). Although I sometimes question my MBTI (recently typed myself as ENTP after being INTP on 16p for years) I am 99.9% sure I am xNxP, I am very much a head in the clouds type of person with constant unrealistic ideas, was tested a lot for ADHD as a child (somehow don't have it) but I sometimes can't tell if I'm impulsive to a fault or very selectively organized (usually I'm a mess)
Examples: One day, I randomly was like, what if I got a tattoo? (had vaguely been thinking about it for a few years, I don't even remember what brought it to my mind that day) All of a sudden, it was ALL I could think about, I had an exam the next day but it did not take away from tattoo thoughts (I did fine but it did take away from studying a little). I spent a lot of time thinking about what design I wanted, what placement I wanted, listing pros/cons to myself, researching a well-reputed place, finding a good artist in said place, deciding what time of the day to get it, watching those "What to know before your first tattoo" videos, deciding what friend to bring, how to get there etc. Literally 3 days later, I had a tattoo. Still don't regret it, one of the best spontaneous decisions I've made.
Another more recent one - my gf is having surgery this summer and spending the rest of the time recovering (we are currently long distance because of college break) and yesterday I was missing her and then I thought, what's stopping me from visiting her? Immediately I whipped out my phone during my work break and started researching flights to the other side of the country on StudentUniverse. That same night, I had already drafted a letter (bear in mind, I'd be visiting her in nearly 2 months) to my parents explaining why it was a good idea to just go, planned out the cost in my head/how many hours of paid work would go towards it, looking at policies for taking time off work, looking at potential options (cheapest dates to fly, best airline and flight to go with for each potential date, how many days to stay) and messaged my girlfriend saying I'm 100% certain I want to come, listing ideas for all the things we could do together (different ones depending on the state of her condition). The next day (today) she messages me saying that she has no idea when she'll get out of the hospital, and that unless I can work with a few days notice (don't want to do that because of costs) I probably can't come. I'm now DEVASTATED and I don't know why I'm so sad, because 24 hours ago I hadn't even THOUGHT about visiting her - but now I've been daydreaming about it all day and it feels like all my hopes and dreams have been crushed! Why???
Another even more recent one, I just spent about 20 minutes writing this post and now my mom is yelling at me for being late for dinner, which I knew was happening within 5 minutes of me sitting down to write this, but I completely forgot. Oops.
In other words, I have a tendency to think of random ideas and then latch on to one, go down a rabbit hole, and then become very determined about seeing it through/stubborn and upset when it can't happen. And I have no idea if this is a function or a mental issue lol

Was browsing estate sales and saw these available near me. I'm thinking it's a Mackie "SRM450"? Maybe? I looked online and they seem to exist, but don't look anything like this.
https://imgur.com/0URdbec

Curious what "reasonable people" think is fair here. I hired a company to regrade my yard on two sides and install a catch basin and drain. They pitched a great plan, but their workers didn't follow it AT ALL. They quoted me close to $8K, and I gave them 10% down. The finished job is not what we agreed on. I doubt it will work to keep water away from the house, and it looks like a mess. And on top of it all, they cut my water main and damaged two of our cars. How much, if any, of the remaining almost $7K should I give them?
More of the story: I accepted the quote and gave them 10% to get on the schedule. I expected a call to let me know a start date. Workers just showed up one day without any notice. They didn't know what the job was and couldn't reach the owner to ask, so they ended up leaving. Next day, they came back with a plan that was nothing like the plan the owner had pitched me.
Every step of the way, I let the owners know I had questions or issues, because they were saying one thing and their workers were doing another. The owners would reassure me, come out and talk through the plan again, and tell me how things were going to get fixed. Then they'd leave and the workers would carry on with chaos. After two days of this, I told the owner that his workers weren't ready to be on jobsites unsupervised. Owner still left them unsupervised.
Today, one of them hit two of our cars with a Caterpillar, didn't tell us, and lied to our faces when we asked what happened. My car got a brand new dent that is Caterpillar yellow, and the rocker panel got ripped off my daughter's car. They both got damaged while parked in our yard, and the only people near them were these guys, but they insist it wasn't them. The owner comes out, looks at the cars, and says he doesn't think it adds up that his guys did it. "If a Caterpillar hit your car, there'd be a hole in it." He doesn't have an theory how even a small Cat-colored dent could show up on its own, though, so he asks what he can do to make me happy. I say he can make me less unhappy by paying for the repairs. He makes a couple calls, decides $1,500 should cover it, and says he'll knock that off my price. I have no idea how much the repairs will be, but a new rocker panel is $600 for just the part. Worse, they "finished" the job today, and I'm nowhere near happy with the work.
They spent part of three days here. They moved around a lot of dirt, tore out two flower beds and a tree, and left zero grass in the entire front yard, but somehow the yard still slopes toward the house for about 20 feet and then slopes up hard toward the foundation for about 3 feet. They cut the water main, even though we had specifically discussed where it was and they assured me they could work around it. I thought the extension on one of the downspouts was broken, and I asked them to make sure it was working before they buried it. They just piled dirt right on over it, so now it needs to be dug up before it can be replaced. They put in a catch basin and drain, which is one good thing, but it's well above the low spot in the yard. They built a berm / swale to direct water toward the side yard, which is another good thing. But they promised no fewer than five times to pile up the large landscape rocks from the border of the flower beds, yet left them mixed in with the dirt in the berm. Instead of a pop up where the drain lets out, they cut a trench into the yard and lined it with rocks. There's more, but that's the highlights.
Lying about hitting our cars was just the absolute last straw. If they'd come and told me, we could have worked it out. But to see a dent the color of your equipment and still say it doesn't add up that your guys did it... that's some BS. His worker is lying, and he's letting him lie.
I gave them close to $800 and owe them almost $7K. I hate to haggle and usually give workers tips at the end of a job. So part of me feels like it's not fair to refuse to pay at least part of the balance. But part of me feels like it's been one disaster after another with nothing but empty promises about fixing things. I need to hire someone else to do the work, since the yard still slopes toward my house for all but the last 3 feet. I need to have two cars repaired. And I'm just disgusted that they lied. What's fair here?

Hello, I purchased the laptop "Legion S7 16ARHA7 - Type 82UG" about a month ago, and I've been having some issues. Let me give you some background. One day, my laptop wouldn't boot up properly, so I went through some troubleshooting steps on my own and later with Lenovo tech support. They determined there was a hardware problem with the laptop.
As a result, they sent out an on-site technician who replaced the motherboard in the laptop. However, after replacing it, he didn't verify his work or check the functionality of the laptop. He only showed me the "BitLocker" screen, told me to log in from there, and left.
When I attempted to input the BitLocker code, the laptop's fans would suddenly speed up and then the machine would shut down. I managed to enter the code quickly enough to proceed to the next step. After several restarts, the laptop surprisingly seemed to work fine, or so I thought.
The real issues started when I began using Blender and tried to play a game. The laptop would suddenly shut down. Upon checking the Event Manager, there were no error logs, only an indication that the computer had turned off unexpectedly. Using Task Manager, I noticed that while the GPU temperature was within a reasonable range, the laptop felt significantly hotter than before, particularly around the power button area. In addition, the fingerprint scanner is no longer recognized by the laptop.
In an attempt to monitor the CPU temperature, I installed and ran "CPUID Hardware Monitor PRO". I started up a game to stress test the system, and the laptop ran for about 30-40 minutes before shutting down. However, when I ran the PC in Quiet mode, with less power, it didn't shut down.
I noticed that the integrated graphics were fluctuating while gaming. At first, I thought it was using integrated graphics for the game, but that wasn't the case. However, it gave me an idea. I disabled the option to switch to integrated graphics in the BIOS and now the laptop doesn't shut down, not even in hybrid mode. I was able to play Diablo 4 for nearly two hours without any issues. The laptop, however, is still much hotter to the touch than before.
Also, the technician never entered the model numbers and serial numbers into the system. As a result, when I check these details using Lenovo BIOS and Lenovo Vantage software, it shows "INVALID".
So, I wonder, could it be overheating? The maximum temperature reached was 100C even when it didn't restart during my latest test. However, it spiked to 105C when it did restart. Could this be the issue, or could there be something else causing the problem?

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
“It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
“Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
“I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.”
“Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
“They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
“This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
“But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?”
“They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.”
“Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
“An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
“They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?”
“Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
“Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.”
“That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?”
“The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
“That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!”
“And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.”
“Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
“Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
“I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
“You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?”
“Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
“The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
“The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
“The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
“So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
“It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
“Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
“Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
“Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
“What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
“There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
“Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!”
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
“Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
“Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
“It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
“It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.”
“What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
“Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.”
“It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
“It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
“Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
“Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?”
“It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.”
“In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?”
“It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.”
“Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
“I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
“What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
“Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
“Why?” Vici asked.
“So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language for ‘thank you’.

I hope this type of post is okay here. I’m doing a refi on my house right now to deal with some debt issues and also work on the house. I literally didn’t even think about the appraisal stuff until the mortgage company mentioned it and now I’m freaking out because the house needs work for sure. Just kind of concerned they won’t approve the mortgage.
My concerns: 1. The dining room is currently being renovated. Floor is torn up, down to slab. Dry wall present. Electric present and working. 2. We just repiped the whole house. There are still some holes. I’d fix them but I have to head out of town tomorrow for a few weeks and don’t have time. 3. Some areas of drywall and floor grout are stained from water. This is a result of the water leaks that led us to repipe the house. Nothing is rotting or falling apart but you can tell there’s been leaks. 4. Tile in the one shower has seen better days. Ive been using caulk to keep it from leaking but it’s obvious I’m using caulk to bandaid it until I can remodel it.
I understand all this can affect the value of the house and that’s fine. I’ll deal. I’m just not sure if any of this pushes me in to C5/C6 territory where I’m not getting approved. If anybody has any thoughts I’d be glad to hear them.

I really like the ending personally. Honestly Jens death was heavily foreshadowed right from the start. "I killed Sarah Schuster last night" (Her Alter Ego / self insert into her stories) Then 5 seasons later she kills herself. Almost all of the seasons are about her and people's hatred towards her, she tried to make amends in the last season and it didn't work. She didn't see a point in trying anymore. Could've been something she was planning for a while though. I mean that tribute video she made for Bette and Tina might’ve been a hint or note. There's one thing that leads me to thinking it wasn't. Jenny so badly wanted to watch the video with all of the group, she had put so much work into it. After the argument with Bette, the realisation kicked in. She was insufferable. She knew she was. She said it herself. She was aware of the fact most people hated her and she thought that the video would fix it, she realised there that it wouldnt. When Bette confronted her, she then and there decided "Well fuck it.". Jenny was such a complex character and I love her so very much.

I 22(F) have never had a good relationship with my mom, I've never felt connected to her like my older brothers are. Even as a kid, I remember feeling uncomfortable around her when she would touch me or show me any type of affection. I honestly don't remember exactly when but at some point she was very hostile and cold towards me. I grew up thinking that she didn't like or love me. When my mom met my stepdad who I'll call Ken for privacy reasons, when I was 11 or 12 the way how she treated me got worse the older I got. She called me nicknames that my bullies gave me and she would go out of her way to embarrass me in front of friends and family. Back in high school I truly felt how much she hated me. She and my stepdad became alcoholics and they were drinking almost every other day. At some point, my stepdad slowed down on drinking so much and tried to get her to do it also but she wouldn't. Her excessive drinking caused issues in their marriage as my mom attends to be aggressive when she drinks.
I thought I was helping her by taking the bottles away and I hoped that she would recognize her drinking was not healthy but this backfired on me as she got very angry. She would throw anything she could get her hands on at me, she kicked in my door so much that it was held up by pieces of tape, and she would be physically and verbally abusive towards me. This happened at least 3 times a week all throughout hs till I was able to move out at 18.
I live with one of my older brothers, who also has a drinking problem but its not as bad as my mom. So sometime last year during one of his drunken rants to my SIL, he said that my mom told him that my stepdad and I were suppost to run away together back then. The next day I asked my SIL about it in disbelief thinking that there was no way people actually believed that and how it made me upset and she basically invalidated my feelings/ thoughts. Ever since then, I feel like my brain was chemically altered, I used to be so carefree and didn't really care about what people thought of me but now I care too much and want to know EVERYTHING that's being said about me. It's like I developed some type of anxiety because when I meet new people or I'm hanging out with family members for holidays or bbqs I can't help but think that when they see me they're looking at a girl who was "supposed" to run away with her stepdad.
So any advice on how I can stop feeling like I did something wrong when I didn't?
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I’m here to tell you about a coin that I think is a hidden gem in the crypto space: Fantom (FTM). This is a coin that I’ve been researching for a long time, and I think it’s about to take off. Here’s why:

• Fantom is a high-performance and secure blockchain platform that leverages a DAG-based consensus algorithm called Lachesis.
• Fantom enables near-instant and low-cost transactions for smart contracts, DeFi, NFTs and more.
• Fantom has a robust ecosystem of partners and projects, such as Yearn Finance, SushiSwap, Curve Finance and more.
• Fantom has a passionate and dedicated community of fans who are spreading the word and creating value.

I bought some FTM today and I’m holding it for the long term. I think it’s one of the most promising coins in the crypto space right now, and it has a lot of potential to grow. If you want to join me on this journey, you can buy FTM on Binance, Uniswap or any other popular exchange. Don’t sleep on this one. #fantom #ftm #crypto #nft

Would really like to practice offline with someone (getting tired of playing CPUs and training mode) where would I go to find local tournaments near me or maybe people just looking to play other real people? I know all the pro and semi pro people practice with people but unless you got roommates that play smash I'm not sure how to do it myself.

Hey everyone: my second product of the year is off the ground and it's been good so far! In just a month, we've managed to pull in 200K page views and nearly 100K visitors. It even made waves on social media with our apps trending here and there.
Now comes the tricky part. The bills for external services we've used, like Vercel, Supabase, and Upstash, are starting to come in. We've introduced pricing to start monetizing, but…., nudging free users to become paying customers is proving to be tougher than I’ve thought.
I'm really curious to know if any of you indie-founders out there have found magic formulas or techniques that helped convert users. And, another thing, I'm eager to reach out to an international audience. I feel they might be more open to paying for our services, but so far, breaking into that market hasn't been easy.
Just a heads up, I'm pretty new to all this, so any advice or guidance would mean to me. Thanks!

So basically I fingered her but I did not know whether there was leftover semen after she gave me a handjob. I wiped away all the semen with wet wipes and proceeded to finger her. I don't know if there could be semen left on my fingers thus I am worried if some of my sperm got into her and could potentially fertilise the egg. Now shes 4 days late according to her app and we are both panicking. Can she really get pregnant from fingering with the presence of a little bit of sperm? it could have been dried up or something as it was really cold bur still i am paranoid

Helloooo thereeee!
Who's into friendship and genuine connection here? I'm down with you so! 😊
I'm a kind, simple girl, loves to talk with anyone especially if its about life that will help me to gain more knowledge or ideas.
I live in USA (so I preffered people near me), my hobbies are singing, dancing, reading books about life, watching movies, cooking and explore new things in life.
I'm also into making friends with anyone as long as you are kind and gentle then we're good.
I hope I can find my match hereeee! Just dont be shy to msg and maybe we'll learn from each other :)

As usual banks are looking out for us homeowners. I find it funny as fuck that people think that the banks and government will just leave homeowners out to dry. Just checked and they did me a huge favor and increased my amortization to 70 years - with these extensions home prices of course have nowhere to go but up and may even double by Q2 2024. Basement still has some room for a couple more immigrants in it too.

As the title says - I'm slowly spinning out & getting nervous .
I typically have therapy every other week and OT every week.. well for nearly a month now I've had no therapy whatso ever. This all started with a saturday late night email that said my therapist would be out of the office on my scheduled day - I was like cool because that week was busy for me (I had a psych eval the next day) so I was fine with that. Then for our next session I attempt to log on and my therapists no showed and I haven't heard from them since. I even sent a check in email with them at the end of the day and got no response. And upon looking back at my emails to them (I haven't recived a response since nearly 3 weeks ago) and now I'm panicking, I've had T's ghost me before quite literally one stopped returning my & my parent's phone calls and went we went to the building (it was locked) and another I showed up and they told me that the T I had seen had left the practice.
Because of this I'm really scared that maybe this T is gone too. But I'm really scared about them & their families safety because even when they are late , they usually sends a quick email/message to let me know that. And In my over a year working with her - they never gone radio silent
I have no idea what to do - because with the other T's that ghosted me , I kinda just dropped the idea of therapy but I can't do that now.

Me and my gf had been arguing a lot the past couple months (2.5 years relationship) and some weeks ago she broke up with me. Our problems were basically because she has avoidant attachment and I have anxious attachment. When she broke up with me she told me she felt worn out because I got mad whenever she did not do some things (reply to texts, call me, hang out with me, etc.) She said she could not give me what I wanted and that she was not willing to put in the effort at that time because she wants to focus on her. However, she also told me she still loved me, that she would probably regret this and a lot of other nice things. We both cried and had a really nice talk that day. She did not act cold at all. At the end she told me we could talk after a few weeks to see how she felt and also so that she could finish her final exams without getting stressed.
I went no contact and did not interact with her at all on social media with her. However, she did interact with me (liked my tweets, liked my tik toks, etc).
I broke no contact after 2 weeks because I really felt she was waiting for me to talk to her and that she was regretting her decision but was not talking to me because she is stubborn.
So I texted her and at first she seemed normal, not happy but not angry either, but her texts were kind of dry. After a few more texts she seemed to get more confortable and started to talk to me like before. I told her "I know you are a bit stressed because of your exams so let go out and eat something nice so we can also do some catch up". I texted her that around 1 pm and she did not reply until 11 pm of that day. I thought she would just ignore me or tell me NO but she replied nicely and told me that she was down for it but she is not sure if she is free this week because of her final exams so she would let me know. I told her good luck on your exams but she continued to text me.
Right now what is annoying me is that we have been texting for 2 days now and she is taking hours to reply (normally in our relationship she would take 30 mins to 2 hours in average). But i really mean hours, today i texted her at 11 am, she replied at 3 pm, I replied at 6 pm and she has not replied again until now. (I took long to reply to match her energy). I know she is stressed and studying for her final exams but I also know she is checking instagram and twitter often so its not like she is not using her phone. Never when we were a couple she took that long to reply.
So my question is: WHY?
She seems like she wants to talk with me but at the same time is taking way too long to reply.
Is she on avoidant deactivation mode?
Is she doing this because now she does not have the obligation to text me back quickly? (we often argued because she took way too long to reply and I would get mad)
Is she doing it on purpose to test me and see if I get mad or something?
I am really confused because when she replies she does it nicely, she does not seem dry or anything but is taking way too much to do it.
Important note: It has been almost 3 weeks since we broke up and she hasn't eliminated our anniversary photos from her instagram. And yes, I am sure this means something because she is the type of person who likes her instagram to look pretty and updated. So i am sure that if she wanted to really move on, she would have eliminated those photos. This is one of those things that makes me think she does want to get back with me.

Hey everyone: my second product of the year is off the ground and it's been good so far! In just a month, we've managed to pull in 200K page views and nearly 100K visitors. It even made waves on social media with our apps trending here and there.
Now comes the tricky part. The bills for external services we've used, like Vercel, Supabase, and Upstash, are starting to come in. We've introduced pricing to start monetizing, but…., nudging free users to become paying customers is proving to be tougher than I’ve thought.
I'm really curious to know if any of you indie-founders out there have found magic formulas or techniques that helped convert users. And, another thing, I'm eager to reach out to an international audience. I feel they might be more open to paying for our services, but so far, breaking into that market hasn't been easy.
Just a heads up, I'm pretty new to all this, so any advice or guidance would mean to me. Thanks!

I think I’m slowly but surely letting you go, it’s been nearly a year and you still somehow cross my mind some point everyday. However, you’re not there as much anymore, I sat on the beach today and watched the world go by, I found peace there today.
I know you are angry at me, I’ve apologised multiple times, you know I never meant to hurt you, instead you took your revenge and posted about me all over tiktok, your followers of 15k and your videos getting over 1 million likes, all about me.
Thank you for telling people about me, however I don’t know what you think you achieved? I never had any friends to begin with so I never lost anything in the end.
You may be angry at me, but you had no right telling people about my childhood trauma, abuse and mental health issues I suffer from, however I forgive you.
I found peace today, I know I can’t hold on to the guilt forever. I wish you could just let your anger go, the way you let me go, like a whisper in the night and you was gone.
Good Luck S, I wish you all the love and happiness in the world, my guy you’re going to need it :)

How would you make life easier?
I'll start. I made recorded gestures that allowed me to Open 5 Gifts (while pinning Postcards), and another that allowed me to Send 5 Gifts at a time. I also made macros for near Buddies or far Buddies that allowed me to Take a Snapshot, Play with Buddy, and Feed 3 Berries at a time.
Thanks to this post, https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/12y74mk/voice_control_in_pok%C3%A9mon_go_a_beginners_guide/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1

I have been turning this question over and over in my mind for a while. My instructor says I should go for it, but it seems a bit daunting for me. (SORRY ABOUT LONG POST, I CAN'T REALLY SHORTEN IT INTO A "TL;DR")
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A little backstory..
I have been riding for just under two years, but I am currently leasing a gelding and have been for the past few months, I have also schooled horses multiple times. I have an independent seat and hand as well, I have shown in a bunch of hunter jumper classes with fences up to 18" and done two showjumping shows with classes featuring fences up to 2' (all successful shows, placed in nearly all), I have dealt with spooks in the arena, on the trail, a few rears as well as bucks (never had a horse bolt into a gallop on me before though), I have loaded horses onto a trailer, and I understand collection and how it can improve a horses overall balance under saddle. (I am probably missing a few other things, will edit as needed)
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I have done tons of research at home and some in person:
The things I have taken in person classes on;
Groundwork, lunging exercises, long-lining
Teeth (aka how often you need to float them, cost, when you need to sedate, what a healthy mouth should look like)
Sheath & utter cleaning (self explanatory)
Hooves (what the ideal shape is, laminitis, supplements and when to use them, how often you need a farrier out)
Blanketing (different weights and when you would need them, measuring for your horse, blankets vs turnout sheets vs fly sheets, when you should start blanketing)
Conformation (ideal build for different disciplines, how to measure it, common faults, brief cover over breed standards like quarter horses vs thoroughbreds vs warmbloods vs irish cobs)
Injuries (How to treat them, superficial vs "you need a vet ASAP", blood staunching, infection, different scarring and how scar position can affect muscle movement, spotting lameness and finding the root of the problem)
Diet (supplements, senior grain vs adult vs yearling, when you need to soak it, schedules, body condition, overfeeding vs underfeeding, concentrate diets vs roughage diets)
All that seems like a lot for only a year and a half, so I figured I should mention my barn does weekly horsemanship classes, sometimes covering the same subject multiple times as a refresher but usually featuring different subjects (There are other classes I have taken but I listed only the ones that seemed most crucial).
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At home research:
Bits (when to use different types, different types in general, leverage, western bits vs english bits)
Martingales and breastplates (when you need them, different types, different ways they may attach to tack)
Saddle fit (how a bad fit affects a horse as well as how a bad fit affects a rider & the inverse of both, how to measure a fit for both animal and rider, horse pain responses to ill fitting tack, saddle and bridle "anatomy")
Helmets (when they expire, fitting one for you, different brands, cost)
Electrolytes (when to use them, different measurements for different weights, how they affect a horse, what to mix them into)
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I help out at my barn every now and then as well which means mucking, fixing fencing, cleaning water buckets, changing out shavings in stalls, filling hay nets, organizing tack rooms, cleaning saddles and bridles, grooming/bathing horses, etc.
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I have heard many times about how there is just no comparison whatsoever between riding lesson horses and horse ownership, which is what scares me the most. Would I be able to care properly for a horse?? I know that I wouldn't neglect it and I would make sure it got good care, whether that means leasing it out or not, so that gives me a bit of reassurance.
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Help me out. Am I being paranoid? Do I have what it would take to own a horse? (I do have the property, but I plan on boarding for a while just to get "into it" if/when I get a horse of my own)
Also, please do not treat me as if I am an adult. I will not directly list my age online but I am between the ages of 13-17. :)